1. Field
The disclosure relates generally to data center management and more specifically to intelligently assessing the power profile of a data center by accounting for carbon costs of energy.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data centers provide computer resources in support of service level agreements between customers and service providers. Customers enter into service level agreements that specify a cost for the service provided. The cost for the services provided includes the cost of energy to operate the data center and to run the servers and other equipment in accordance with the service level agreement. Customers may look to other factors than a final cost figure. For example, in many industries, customers look for “green solutions,” which are services that take into account the environmental impact of providing the services. Some customers prefer to pay more for a “green solution” than for a traditional solution because doing so provides goodwill benefits to the customers' reputation with the public and those who in turn consume the customer's own services.
Data center profiles provide information to management on the number of servers in the data center, the performance of the servers in the data center, and the total power requirements of the data center facility. Data center profiles are useful for determining what workloads may be run on the available servers. However, data center profiles do not provide information for determining the lowest total cost method of running a workload. Current data center profiles do not take into account environmental costs in providing the data center services in support of service level agreements. For example, current data center profiles do not take into account information regarding the source of the power consumed by the data center. For example, the source of the power consumed by the data center could come from a nuclear power plant, a coal burning power plant, a geothermal power plant, a solar farm, a wind farm, or other types of electric energy production. Each type of source may have a particular cost at which it sells its power, but each also has a different environmental impact measurable in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide introduced into the atmosphere to generate a particular amount of energy.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method, apparatus, and computer program code that may overcome one or more of the issues described above, as well as other possible issues.